AE does an incredible job of figuring out the quality of the image no matter how far back you take it. I just brought in a picture and added a camera. Moved the camera's Z position to -124262.3649 and increased the scale of the image to fit the scene and I can't see any lose of quality. You should be able to move the mountain and sky as far back as you want and increase the scale of the image with no quality loss. Hope this helps and best of luck.
Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions
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